PAUL:	Youth and its many dalliances 
        lead in circuitous and 
        serpentine routes to the mess 
        in which we find ourselves 
        today.

        Innocent excursions into the 
        wider world setting forth from 
        the virginal territories of 
        immaturity can cast the die 
        for our full sentence as 
        quasi-sentient beings.

        Some of the activities in 
        which I engaged as a callow 
        boy, and I feel sure, some of 
        those in which you 
        participated, do, on 
        reflection, seem ... ill-
        advised ?  Stupid?  Dangerous?

        One particularly influential 
        force on your scribe was the 
        time I blithely pissed away in 
        the service of MUNRadio, the 
        campus radio station at the 
        Memorial University of 
        Newfoundland.

        Would I be where I am today, 
        would I be the person I am, 
        would I have done everything 
        in between then and now I have 
        done had I not opened a 
        microphone pot on the old 
        McCurdy control board in the 
        MUNRadio studios ?

        Many of life’s piquant or 
        forbidden delicacies were 
        first sampled during my tenure 
        there.

        Girls, for instance.

        Freedom, for another.  With 
        any luck, both these could be 
        experienced at the same time.  

        And responsibility, which 
        everyone did their best to 
        evade.

        We disc jockeys rented 
        basement dives, ingested huge 
        quantities of industrial 
        strength chemical transports 
        and Kraft macaroni and cheese, 
        discovered Tequila, listened 
        to endless hours of terrible 
        rock music, read Plath and 
        Sartre and Chairman Mao, 
        laughed at both Marxes and 
        Lennons, grew our hair long, 
        razzed the engineers’ frat, 
        stuffed Volkswagens, and did 
        our laundry at home.

        Those were, in a tired but apt 
        cliché, the days.

        Now that conduit of seasoning, 
        that maturition process, is 
        under serious threat of being 
        squashed through a self-
        important, short-sighted, Paul 
        Martin-influenced budgetary 
        decision by a bunch of play 
        politicians.

        The Student Council at 
        Memorial is considering taking 
        MUNRadio off the air.  And it 
        is a wrong-headed decision.

        MUNRadio has produced more 
        quality on and off air 
        broadcast people than, eh, ... 
        and it is completely unfair of 
        those trying to close down the 
        station to use me as some sort 
        of example.

        MUNRadio’s presence has been 
        felt in every radio, 
        television and newspaper 
        office in this province.  It 
        develops skills and life-long 
        addictions that have produced 
        an impact on communications 
        and media second to no other 
        organization that churns out 
        people of the word, the sound, 
        and the picture.

        It is a most accessible 
        contact between the halls of 
        academe and the sty of 
        society.

        MUNRadio, a small but 
        important column upon which is 
        built an edifice of progress, 
        the fourth estate.  Don’t 
        remove the plinth for the sake 
        of the volute.

Page 4 of 5	PAULITORIAL - SHOW # 21